One Enchanted Evening... There Were Mushrooms

Now it can be told. X10 headquarters recently served as the West Coast clinical trial for the John Hopkins University study of magic mushrooms. The study released this week in Psychopharmacology was conducted in both Baltimore, Maryland and Kent. There was no general knowledge of the participation among most X10 employees, as the study concentrated on a small segment of the marketing department.

Researchers concluded in the public report that the participants had "mystical" experiences,” upon taking the magic mushrooms and many of them still felt unusually happy months later. Some participants even dropped negative behaviors such as smoking and alcohol consumption as long as they were given more mushrooms. The selected few chosen for study maintained a unique eye contact and a secret handshake that identified them to each other. Conversations were engaged with the word “Portobello.”

Each Wednesday afternoon, they would gather in a remote conference room where doctors fed them psilocybin extract, the chief ingredient in the Psilocybin family of mushrooms. The government study followed the participants as they left the conference room to join in their typical workday tasks.

“Am I the only one in this room that believes Lola is one magnificent woman? If I weren’t already married….” A marketing manager was beginning to make aggressive gestures toward X10’s acclaimed video sender product.

“Lola?” Another asked. “What is that amazing bright light over there in the corner? Is that a friend of Lola?”

“It seems to be some kind digital display, the kind that can only be captured by the advanced Sentinel camera after they’ve taken down the last of the 99 bottles of beer on the wall,” said another.

“Excellent, gentlemen,” the observing doctor marveled at his work.

“You know, I think I see another figure in my vision,” the first marketing guy said. “It kind of looks like the figure of a masked bandit working late in the night…”

“Oh wow, I see him. He’s a Robin Hood figure, but wearing black instead of green.” The younger one said. “I wonder what is meant by the symbolism in all that?”

“Gosh, I don’t know, “said the other. “Perhaps it means there’s an Inconvenient Truth in all of this…”

“Damn, maybe Al Gore still wants to be President,” said the third marketing guy, now assuming a weird position at the end of the couch.

“Maybe he wants to be president of X10?” the others chimed in.

“I just hope no mushrooms were hurt in the making of this vision,” said one, conscientiously.